Man vs robot: A technology-driven dystopia

Never before in the history of man has this fear been so real. Even the most tech-friendly person is asking: Will we lose out to robots?October 24, 2016, 10:23 IST

By Debkumar Mitra, Gray Matters

In Lucas Varela’s wordless, graphic narrative, The Longest Day of the Future, two warring corporate giants wreak havoc in a futuristic megatechnopolis trying to gain control.

Though the purpose of the narrative is to mock consumerist hunger fuelled by late capitalism, Varela’s illustrations of the workforce — they comprise both humans and robots — raise another concern: a technology-driven dystopia.

Never before in the history of man has this fear been so real. Even the most tech-friendly person is asking: Will we lose out to robots?

Since Nicolas Copernicus concluded that the Earth moves around the Sun, every time a new technology made an appearance, we have reacted violently. (Remember the advent of the Cotton Jenny?) The reasons are largely economic — job loss — but the ability of a machine doing work once done by man also causes the unease.

When World Bank president Jim Yong Kim talked about 69% jobs in India being threatened by automation, the concern was not only over a huge economic trouble ahead but also that an invisible enemy was eating up jobs. There is some comfort in pointing out examples from the Industrial Revolution to the birth of the personal computer (PC).

If these did not make man idle, why would artificial intelligence (AI)? It is true that a new technology creates more jobs and pushes up the GDP. But many, including some scientists involved in unleashing the AI genie and economists, believe that is an optimistic view. So who are doing these GDP-propping jobs without raising human overheads? The needle of suspicion points towards robots.

The popular image of robots is of a mechanical, now digital, companion, closer to a slave that makes life easier. That idea was dominant in the popular imagination for a long time. But once science fiction writer Isaac Asimov came up with his laws of robotics and Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey described a computer with a mind of its own, the earlier, more sterile image took a hit.

Much before Asimov, mathematician Alan Turing came up with his famous test to find if a computer programme has actually attained human intelligence. Fellow mathematician Claude Shannon floated the idea of a chessplaying computer.

Most of these were, however, too esoteric for public consumption and remained mostly within the science-technology community. Occasionally, when the PC made its first appearance, or IBM’s Deep Blue machine beat Russian grandmaster Gary Kasparov in chess, the public looked up in awe.

Computers have been engaged in defence research, space exploration, weather forecasting and communication for years. But no one really took notice. When the power of computing was packed into a PC, the fear of job loss became all too real.

In India, the Left loudly protested when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi introduced computerisation in banks. With time, the PC transformed into a laptop and then to a smartphone and we hailed their arrivals.

With AI things are a bit different. In its first coming, despite chief engine driver Marvin Minsky’s sincere efforts, AI could not deliver those smart machines that think and deliver at the speed of light. Many thought AI would have a quiet burial.

In its second coming, AI, armed with big data and deep learning, has returned much stronger.

Most AI systems developers believe that like the technologies 'in the past' such as cars, radio or TV, this new technology, too, will enhance human capability. That may be true. Though physicist Stephen Hawking’s fear of a rogue AI system destroying the human civilisation is largely unfounded, the fear of job loss is a clear and present danger.

AI is eating up jobs faster than it is helping to create. The machine DJ is already jazzing up bars. News-bots are 'writing' reports. And a legal secretary programme has entered firms. The technology is changing so fast that people are finding it difficult to keep pace, causing much anxiety.

Take Finland. The country’s sudden transformation from a largely agrarian economy to a technologically advanced one over a short period of time is cited as one of the main reasons behind a spurt in Finland’s suicide rate in the late 1980s-early 1990s.

AI, machine learning and deep learning will soon be present from education to retail. Can we think fast enough to take control and co-habit with our creation? We have history on our side. But what if one of us gains control over these systems?